<w:sdt prefixmappings="xmlns:ns0='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/' xmlns:ns1='http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/package/2006/metadata/core-properties' " xpath="/ns1:coreProperties[1]/ns0:title[1]" docpart="64FC162648E549F7B8C19FCC7261E47E" text="t" storeitemid="X_6C3C8BC8-F283-45AE-878A-BAB7291924A1" title="Titel" id="484670959">Pragmatism in Organisation Studies Amsterdam Workshops 15 and 16 December, 2025</w:sdt>
Workshop 1. Research in, for and with practice
With contributions of Barbara Simpson and Philippe Lorino
Pragmatism in Organisation Studies
15 December 2025
You are invited to a workshop on research in, for and with practice on the 15th of December 2025 at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (AUAS). Two renowned scholars, Barbara Simpson and Philippe Lorino, will present their ideas on how to contribute to practice transformation as scholars and how to train students to do so. In two sessions, we will discuss how a pragmatist approach to research differs from mainstream approaches, and what the implications are for research in, for and with practice.
Philippe and Barbara both emphasise the importance of experience in research. An extreme role model for research has been developed in universities. This has led to schools that are out of tune with societal needs. Pragmatism offers some promising avenues to change this situation, avenues that were very instrumental a hundred years ago by leaders such as Mary Parker Follett and Chester Barnard.
Following a theoretical introduction, we will explore various research approaches that can make a practical difference. Some cases are provided by the research group Governance, Finance & Accounting at the AUAS, but other researchers are also invited to contribute their cases. Barbara and Philippe will come up with comments that could further improve the research cases by staying close to a pragmatist perspective on organisation and change.
BIO'S
Barbara Simpson is Professor in Leadership and Organisation Dynamics at Strathclyde Business School. A New Zealander living in Scotland, and a physicist turned organizational researcher, she embodies and celebrates the generative power of differencing. She takes particular delight in collaborating across disciplinary and cultural boundaries, where there is potential for new insights to emerge out of differences. Her research and teaching interests are shaped by the writings of process philosophers, especially the Pragmatists, as well as the challenges of practising in ways that are authentically processual. Her work is published in journals and books that address various disciplinary communities.
Philippe Lorino is Emeritus Professor at ESSEC Business School and adviser to the French Nuclear Safety Authority. He studied at Ecole Polytechnique of Paris and holds a Ph. D. in management. He has served as a senior civil servant in the French Government and as a manager in an international manufacturing company. He draws from pragmatist philosophy to study organizations as organizing processes rather than stable structures. In this perspective, organizing involves meaning-making pluralist inquiries aimed at exploring uncertain futures, supporting collective learning and controlling risk in high-risk activities such as nuclear power. He uses semiotic approaches to design and develop managerial instruments and methods. He experienced his approach in such diverse industries as energy generation, telecommunications, railways, chemicals, banking, or in public services. He has published articles in top-ranking journals, chapters in academic and professional books, and books. His book "Pragmatism and Organization Studies" (Oxford University Press) won the 2019 EGOS Book Award.
Date: Monday 15 December 2025
Time: 09:00-16:00
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Registration: send e-mail to e.douque@hva.nl
Workshop 2. Professor dr. Barbara Simpson
Diffracting Collaborative Leadership: A Pragmatist project
16 December 2025
During this workshop, Barbara Simpson will explore her recently published book, Diffracting Collaborative Leadership (abstract below). Combining brief segments of content with participatory exercises, the workshop aims to deepen understanding of how leadership acts as a future-oriented, social process, and how this understanding might inform practices of organizing, teaching, and researching. It will begin by unpacking the three key ideas of the book's title – leading, collaborating, and diffracting – drawing on recent developments in theory as well as participants' own experience. The five movements of leading identified in the book – associating, experimenting, making, feeling and caring – are derived from an empirical study of a senior management team diffracted with the writings of the classical Pragmatists, especially George Herbert Mead, Jane Addams, John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett. The relevance of these movements will be elaborated in the contemporary context of worlds-on-the-move. The workshop will conclude by identifying new ideas about how to develop leading as a dynamic, creative and liberating form of practising.
Diffracting Collaborative Leadership: A Pragmatist project
Book Abstract
Leadership, as an area of research, seems to be a source of endless fascination. So much has been written about it, and yet the questions keep coming. It is almost as if we are asking the wrong questions. In Diffracting Collaborative Leadership, the author proposes that leadership in organizations may be constituted as a complementary duality comprising 'leaders' and 'leading'. Whereas the topic of 'leaders' is already thoroughly researched in the organizational literature, the processes of 'leading' remain significantly under-developed, due at least in part to methodological challenges. Grappling with the slipperiness of a world-on-the-move requires a serious commitment to processual approaches that invite researchers to participate with the ongoing flow. Pragmatist philosophy offers a systematic approach to engaging with the fluidities of leading. Using Pragmatism to diffract the experiences of the senior management team in an arts-based company, this book explores 'leading' as a creative, collaborative process of future-making, suggesting that leadership is what we do when we don't know what to do.
Date: Tuesday 16 December 2025
Time: 09:00-12:00
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Registration: send e-mail to e.douque@hva.nl
Dr. Frank Jan de Graaf
Professor Corporate Governance & Leadership
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Centre for Economic Transformation – hva.nl/CET
Centre for Financial Innovation – hva.nl/CFI
Postbus 814 / 1000 AV Amsterdam
Visiting Address:
Business Campus, Fraijlemaborg 133 / 1102 CV Amsterdam
Tel 020 – 595 2312│06 - 30 39 97 51
www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Graaf